a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Best/Worst Jazz Lineups

So David Locke put together some stats on the Jazz’s best and worst offensive and defensive lineups today. While he warns that it’s a very small sampling and should therefore be taken with some disclaimers in mind, what’s the point of posting stats on the Internet if you’re not going to jump to conclusions right? ;-) Either click here or on the image below for the full version.

Interesting notes and/or elementary conclusions that can be drawn:

–The common thread holding together all five of our worst defensive lineups? It’s not hard to guess. His name is Carlos Boozer. Boozer also made four of five Best Offensive Lineups, though not the top one.

–AK and Sap both made all five Best (Overall) Lineups and Best Defensive Lineups, while Deron made four of five in both categories (the fifth Best (Overall) Lineup has Brewer at the point, so I’m throwing it out because it’s unlikely to happen again). Going out on a very short limb here, then, I’ll say that the three-headed monster we need on the floor together as much as possible is 8/24/47.

–Our second most oft-used lineup (by far) gets outscored by 26 points when it’s on the floor. Yikes.

–OMSW is our defensive champion thus far, so it’s not surprising that he’s in our best defensive lineup. However, the Matthews/Maynor combination also found its way into the first, second, and fifth worst defensive lineups.

–Many/some/a few people think that one of the reasons we often look so shabby is because we play Boozer and Memo (two players not known for their defensive prowess) alongside each other, so I took a look at which lists the Boozer+Memo combo appears in. Unsurprisingly, the only list where the combination makes more than one appearance is the Worst Defensive Lineups category, where they show up as the second, third, and fifth worst defensive lineups the Jazz have to offer.